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lubablog

Because wherever you go, there you are
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Monday, April 23, 2007

Clueless Bozos

Which crazy leftie said the following:
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough."
And this:
Why are we in this mess?
How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.



Answer: Lee Iacocca. He saved Chrysler once. Now he's trying to save the rest of us.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

So It Goes


Kurt Vonnegut died quietly on Thursday, news of his death being lost among all the Imus blather in the media. Kurt was the anti-Imus: knowledgeable, never purposely cruel, a humanist who came by his views through life experience–he survived he bombing of Dresden in WWII–and wanted to make the world a better place.

His books were an important part of my youth; I read them all throughout high school and college. Unlike many other favorites of my youth (e.g. Heinlein), they have stood the test of time, and I enjoy them still. His books were a melange of science fiction and social consciousness, with a good deal of humor. His plots were nonsensical yet meaningful. He was Kilgore Trout with good writing skills, a latter day Mark Twain.

The purpose of his books, was, in his own words, to "catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and poison their minds with humanity."

He opposed the War in Iraq, and took other unpopular stands. The was a humanist/atheist, and never felt compelled to lie about or justify it. He love his country, but not unconditionally, and could see her flaws:


Kurt on the state of our country:
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka 'Christians,' and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities.'
On Bush's foreign policy:
So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget.
About the causes of the Iraq war:
Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.


About how our two-party system has come to be defined by the media:
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative. What could be simpler?
About Bush's former popularity:
"The overwhelming popularity of President Bush, in spite of everything, finally shows us what the American people, whom we have so sentimentalized for so long, a la Norman Rockwell, really are, thanks to TV and purposely lousy public schools: ignorant. Count on it!"
About global warming:
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
About his general political philosophy, one with which I am in complete accord:
I don't want to belong to a country that attacks little countries.
Per PZ at Pharyngula, I think it is also only fair to give him Kilgore Trout's epitaph:
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.


PZ Myers also notes a request from Kurt:
I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke.
Per his request.......Kurt is up in heaven now!


A nice eulogy here.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Compare and Contrast

The massive crowd that gathered to tear down the statue of Saddam four years ago:



The "meager" crowd that got together this past weekend to protest American occupation of Iraq:


Adjectives courtesy of our right wing press.

Photos courtesy of Greg at This Modern World.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Easter Fun

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Pysanky

I've been busy this week, both at work (my favorite place to blog), where it's been crazy, and at home, where I've been getting ready for Easter. It would be embarrassing to not make enough pysanky!

As I type, it is snowing outside. When Passover comes early, we (the Orthodox) get a lousy Easter. It's not the weather I would pick for marching around the church at midnight.

I've taken a photo of some of this year's pysanky. To get a better view, click on the photo:

Sunday, April 01, 2007

If Only........

Some are April fools. Other are are just plain fools.

Success in Iraq!

Iraq has been pacified, and all is well there. How do I know?

First, Republican congressman Tim Walberg from Michigan told us that "parts of Iraq are no more dangerous than Detroit, Chicago or Harvey, Illinois." Now, I lived in Detroit for over 6 years, and never had any sorts of problems. I had my my car broken into, and hubcaps and purse stolen in the suburbs, but no crime problems in Detroit.

So I know that Iraq must be safe.

Second, two Iraqi dentist bloggers say that things are much better. I don't read their blog, but they were quoted in the Wall Street Journal and by President Bush recently. And they're on the ground in Iraq, so they must know. In fact, they're such good bloggers that they got to meet with Bush in the White House a few years ago. The blogger who wrote this:
Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
was obviously just suffering from sour grapes, upset that SHE didn't get invited to the White House. Why else would she spread such lies about the glorious American victory in Iraq?

And then today, St. John McCain, Mr. Straight Talk himself, took a stroll in Iraq to show how safe it is. He strolled briefly through an open-air market in Baghdad to show how safe it is. He wore a bulletproof vest, and was accompanied by 100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.



In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed “walk freely” in some areas of Baghdad. Video here.

Of course, malcontents who work and live in Iraq disagree:



But what do they know?

WWJD?

In case you missed church this morning: